Emily Vance Brown

Recent Posts

  • Little Rot (Book Review)

    by Akwaeke Emezi

    4/5

    I recently read Akwaeke Emezi’s poetry for the first time and loved it, so it’s no surprise I was a fan of their prose, too. Little Rot is intense, fast-paced, and filled with surprising twists and turns. I read it for a book club, and we all agreed that it would make a riveting action film should a screenwriter decide to tackle an adaptation. The plot of the novel takes place over the span of slightly more than 24 hours. For a piece that includes so many alternating characters and viewpoints, it’s surprisingly intricate and detailed without being convoluted with too many concurrent plots. My main issue with the story, and the reason it didn’t receive that fifth and final star, was that by the end of the novel, the characters did not seem to have grown or developed in any noticeable way; however, I recognize that Emezi did as much in regards to their characters as was probably possible within the time frame of the story. 

    Overall, I really liked this book. I think it would be a tricky one to recommend to other readers because of the intensity of the subject matter—Emezi was not exactly light-handed on the graphic violence and sex—but I do think it was an impressive and incredibly well-written book.

  • This is a Poem about God (Original Poem)

    A shotgun in the backyard silences the barking.

    Don’t misunderstand me,

    the man has not shot his dog. 

    In the morning, when the man wakes,
    the bitch will be gone,           her only trace
    the holes she chewed in his once-brand-new suede leather boots.

    The other dogs will howl until they tire
    of the raucous and return to lick
    the man’s bare feet while he weeps. 

    The man, 

    who will witness the great return.

    The man, 

    who only cries when he’s not alone. 

    The man, 

    who forgets he was something else first.

    He prays for the end of the world.

     

    A shotgun in the backyard shortens the praying.

    In theory, 

    not so great a tragedy. 

    There are always other men willing,
    or waiting, to seduce stray dogs          home
    with a flank of rib or a rawhide bone.

    She empties his pockets on the way out,
    a sinner in the rags of a traveling thief
    as she unbuilds his home, stone by stone

    The thief,

    who speaks with the heretic’s voice. 

    The thief,

    who stitches the wounds that a lesser man sowed 

    The thief,

    who begs the others: come with me.

    She buries the dogs by the sycamore tree.

     

    A shotgun in the backyard raises the dead.

    They circle like wolves against the house
    in-between the here          the there
    A nightmare’s daydream of a time before, or,

    an apocalypse already past, embedded
    under the skin, to remind us of the
    inevitabilities we are left with:

    The dog,

    who is only a dog, who forgives

    The man,

    who is only a man, who envies

    The thief,

    who was never a thief, though she often forgets–

    And you, whining like a dog in heat.

  • “A Case Against Loneliness” (Poem)

    by KB Brookins

    In the beginning, heaven begat earth & earth
    begat Sunday. For this one, I’m sitting in a desk chair
    crafted by hands, all somewhere unaware
    that they’re now touching bare skin. This
    is all the proof I needed, but I’m feeling generous
    with language, so I’ll try to make this quick: in 
    the dreams of my dearest enemies, I am kissing dirt
    handled by a million years of fertilizer & dead
    skin in a casket made by the son of someone or 
    a sibling that was loved by many. Everything that exists
    has a birthstory. Some days, I touch mud just to high-five
    the humans that willed it. But today, just like any day,
    I could never be alone. Today I am polyam with the sunlight
    & trees just like Bjork wanted. I mean polyam as in
    I talk to them. I mean alone as in there isn’t a human
    here to witness this desk chair be a utility & a lineage. 
    When I pause long enough to listen, the ancestors speak to me.
    They remind me that everything in the world has been
    touched & every surface has dependence on something 
    using it. I chuckle in agreement & tell them that lonely
    is a capitalist concept. I tell the lover coming
    from the showerhead to kiss me until I’m clean.

  • Rouge, Bunny, and All’s Well (Book Review)

    by Mona Awad

    After reading most of Mona Awad’s repertoire and discussing them with friends, I’ve come to the conclusion that whether or not someone likes one of her books depends primarily on how much they connect to the situations being satirized. I have friends who are obsessed with Bunny, who thought All’s Well was boring as hell, and who love the fairytale-style of Rouge. Personally, I don’t like Awad’s writing style in general but I am intrigued by her method of choosing niche, personal subject matter that’s almost akin to telling an inside joke—if you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, you just don’t.

    My individual reviews, in order from lowest to highest rating:

    • Rouge, 2/5: I thought this story, and the writing, were lackluster. It didn’t ever really do what it seemed like it was trying to do. I wanted Rouge to delve deeper into the social commentaries on race and beauty, but Awad only ever skimmed the surface of these topics. Aside from that, none of the characters underwent any kind of development or transformation, and the romance felt forced.
    • Bunny, 3/5: I didn’t explicitly dislike this one, but I didn’t really like it either. I have the distinct feeling that this story isn’t meant for me, and that’s okay. My friends and coworkers who were involved in sororities in college really liked this one; they’ve said it reminds them of those types of clique-ish relationships found in sororities and other similar women-only groups. I’ve never had that type of experience with female friends, so I think I just didn’t get it! I would still recommend it to someone looking for a woman-led magical realist story, or to someone specifically looking for a satire of mean girl cliques.
    • All’s Well, 4/5: This was my favorite of Awad’s work, and the only one that I would actively say I enjoyed reading. I thought Miranda’s interactions with her doctors and coworkers are a beautiful example of what it feels like to experience medical trauma and gaslighting and how it feels to suffer from invisible chronic pain. As a fan of Shakespeare, I also really enjoyed the theatre element and the thematic allusions to Macbeth. That being said, I think All’s Well is similar to Bunny in the sense that it seems like it would only hit home if you have a personal connection to the subject matter, so I’d only be likely to recommend it to someone who has experience with and is okay with reading about chronic illness.

  • “Are All the Break-Ups in Your Poems Real?” (Poem)

    by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

    If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck
    in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,
    the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—
    then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,
    bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them—
    and when I say I am married, it means I married
    all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.
    Can you imagine the number of bouquets, how many
    slices of cake? Even now, my husbands plan a great meal
    for us—one chops up some parsley, one stirs a bubbling pot
    on the stove. One changes the baby, and one sleeps
    in a fat chair. One flips through the newspaper, another
    whistles while he shaves in the shower, and every single
    one of them wonders what time I am coming home.

  • Like Happiness (Book Review)

    by Ursula Villarreal-Moura

    4/5

    I picked this up from a bookstore down the street called Gladys Books and Wine. It was a random choice–I’d never heard of the title or author before–and I’m so glad I stumbled onto it. 

    Like Happiness tackles the same subject matter that’s been rising in popularity since the MeToo movement first started a few years ago, but it does so in what I find to be a particularly unique and compelling way. The story jumps back and forth between the narrator’s interactions with a journalist regarding her former ambiguous relationship with a famous author and her letter to the author in question. Villarreal-Moura delicately tackles the grey area of what’s appropriate between so-called “friends,” between a young woman and an older man, and between a celebrated writer and his fan. There’s little that Mateo does that explicitly crosses a clear line into sexual abuse, yet most of his behavior feels recognizably uncomfortable in the context of his relationship to Tatum, even if it’s sometimes difficult as a reader to put your finger on the reason why. 

    (This paragraph contains spoilers): I think this distinction between reasonable and inappropriate is most obvious in Tatum’s drunk email to the journalist towards the end of the novel. Unlike Mateo, she notes, the journalist doesn’t feel the need to respond to her email. He doesn’t choose to cross that line, while Mateo never had any qualms about inserting himself into his young fan’s life. I particularly appreciated the way that Mateo’s final choice to use Tatum’s life, without permission or credit, as inspiration for his new novel imitates the choices that famous male artists have made throughout history. This plot point reminded me of artists like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Picasso, who are still celebrated for their originality and creativity despite their unashamed plagiarism of the work and experiences of the women in their lives.

  • breakup letter to my car (Original Poem)

    You know the line: it’s not you, it’s me.

    You were perfect, 

    I swear. Couldn’t have asked 

    for better. Even that one time 

    you flooded out of nowhere, 

    leaving me to drive to the 

    auto repair shop with my pedals 

    nearly underwater. Even when your 

    cruise control stopped working halfway 

    through my two-week drive to New York. 

    Little things like these could never 

    have stopped me from treasuring you, 

    and please believe, they didn’t. 

    You were my first way out. You 

    were my first taste of freedom, my 

    introduction to the idea that there are 

    roads yet to be taken. Roads 

    we can still turn down. There’s always 

    time left to discover a new route, 

    and my little red Honda HR-V and me, well, 

    we found so many. Little town after 

    little town, suburb after 

    suburb. Up and down the same 

    old freeway, sure, but never the same sights. 

    From late-night roommate trips to Whataburger to 

    the weekend ferries of student stoners to 

    the closest HEB with fresh-squeezed orange juice. 

    Coffee cart catering gigs, kayaking trips, and 

    my own personal changing room at overcrowded pools. 

    Moving in, moving out. Making out in the backseat.

    Do you remember when you carried me and 

    Emma halfway across the state? We were 

    chasing the solar eclipse. We made it 

    to Kerrville, where we thought we were headed, 

    and then we all said, “What if we just kept going?” 

    We watched the darkness overhead from some curb 

    outside Medina as Emma and I gaped in awe at the impossibility 

    of life and the miracle of us being there to witness it, 

    and you stood ready to take us home.

    And that summer, “the bad summer,” as I like 

    to call it now, although they’re all kind of bad 

    when you’re living somewhere with road tar hot 

    enough to melt the rubber off your shoes, 

    you were the only thread holding my sanity together. 

    I know you remember the route: south down 35, 

    up Lamar, east down Airport, back north up the feeder. And 

    if we got home and I didn’t feel better yet, well, that’s okay, 

    baby, let’s run it again. It would have bored anyone else 

    to tears how many times I made you do laps with me, 

    but you didn’t mind. Want to blast sad girl indie rock on the stereo? 

    Sure, that’s fine with you. Want to scream along to 

    midwest emo in heavy traffic with the windows rolled down? 

    Whatever I need.

    You alone understood: I came of age on the Interstate. 

    Even in my childhood daydreams, kolaches marked the halfway 

    point and semi-abandoned gas stations sold gadgets 

    I shouldn’t have understood in vending machines 

    that never saw repairs. A court-ordered road trip kid 

    doesn’t stand a chance of healing anywhere else.

    If I’m ever to let go, I think, it’s got to be now. 

    I can’t always be waiting here in Bushwick with 

    one hand on my MetroCard and one hand

    on your driver’s side door. I can’t keep sitting 

    behind the wheel, thinking about how I’ve cried 

    in this one spot more than anywhere else. I’ve cried 

    with you more than I have with anyone else.

    I’d like to not be crying anymore. 

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s not your fault. 

    It’s just how we were. 

    And I know I’m not supposed to admit this, I know 

    it goes against my “pedestrians rule the streets” 

    kind of attitude and my love of public transportation,

    But, oh, I loved you so. 

    You, who always carried me where I needed to go.

  • “portrait with new moon” (Poem)

    by Adrian Sobol

    The Moon demands to be taken
    seriously. Me too. So I write a letter,
    address it, lick the envelope shut.

    Dear Moon, come back, we have so much
    in common. Let’s hang out sometime.
    I haven’t worn my floral dress since

    that summer in the commune,
    salting my body with sage
    to cleanse the houses

    inside me. The ghosts 
    just won’t leave. They harbor.
    They feast. They say

    the sky is indifferent
    without you. Stars go quiet
    one by one like distant ships.

    If I were a constellation
    I’d have burned out
    in front of everyone too.

    They’d call me Argos
    after Odysseus’ dog
    who waited to die

    until his master could 
    watch. Hey, Moon
    I don’t believe in

    astrology. I still
    know exactly who I am.
    I forgive myself

    for it once a day.
    Moon, please
    I just want to be seen

    as anybody else. That summer,
    when I saw my portrait
    For the first time, I was touched.

    It looked nothing like me.
    I said Thank you.
    It looks nothing like me.

  • Endling (Book Review)

    By Maria Reva

    5/5

    Endling was my favorite read of 2025 so far. I discovered Maria Reva a few years ago when she had just published her debut novel, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, and I’ve been eagerly waiting for more since. Good Citizens was an interconnected short story collection that follows the residents of an accidentally uncataloged apartment building in Ukraine. The book’s characters and unusual style left quite an impression on me and I think about it often. Endling was no different. The plot is ingenious bordering on insane. I’m fairly certain no one else would have come up with a cast of characters that include an asexual snail scientist, the two daughters of a disappeared activist, and the Ukrainian bridal tourism industry itself. Reva’s book tackles some of the heaviest topics of our current society, yet somehow comes across as more whimsical than dark. It has a magic to it that I yearn for in my literary fiction, and I’m sure I’ll be thinking about it, and recommending it for years to come. 

  • Starting from Scratch (Original Short Story)

    In the old days, Whiskey greeted her at the front door every morning. Fourteen-hour overnight shifts were no match for the cat’s crippling separation anxiety. Now, she was lucky to get more than one glimpse of her speckled brown coat per day. 

    “Whiskey! Breakfast!” she calls, and cracks open a pink can of Fancy Feast, a feeble attempt at enticing the cat out of her hiding spot. James had never let her buy wet food for Whiskey, usually picking up one of those cheap, unappetizing orange-and-pink kibble mixes himself. It was one of the first parts of her daily routine that she let herself change after he went away. 

    She tosses the can into the pantry trash and takes a moment to survey the empty shelves. The paint is peeling again where the door frame meets the yellowed wall, and she absent-mindedly picks at it as she leans her head against the pantry door. She waits there, as she does every morning and night, watching the chipped pink food bowl. Whiskey had not eaten in front of her in six years. She stifles down one of the waves of guilt that had been growing more frequent over the past three months. 

    Still eyeing the bowl, she navigates her way through the remaining haphazard stacks of moving boxes taking up most of the free space in the kitchen. No sign of Whiskey, but at least one benefit of the divorce was that, with most of their furniture tucked away in James’s storage unit, there were fewer places for a cat to hide. 

    She finally corners Whiskey in the primary bedroom closet. Wet food having proved a disappointment, she attempts to coax her towards the cat carrier with a handful of smelly salmon treats. When her second effort of bribery fails as easily as the first, she grabs the cat around her middle and unceremoniously shoves her, back legs first, through the carrier door. “Sorry, baby,” she whispers as she pokes the salmon treats through the metal bars. Whiskey secured in her carrier, she meets the moving van outside and helps the two men, barely older than teenagers, load the pieces of the last seven years of her life onto the truck.

    The two-hour-long drive to their new apartment is as traumatic for both of them as she expected it to be. At least some things don’t change, she thinks as Whiskey bellows and flings her weight against the side of the carrier. She had never liked the car. When she adopted her as an eight-week-old kitten, the shelter volunteer had unironically gifted her a pair of foam earplugs to block out Whiskey’s shrill screech on the ride home. If only Whiskey still resembled that tiny 3-pound creature in any other way. As a kitten, she had been the most social cat she’d ever met, running to greet every new person who walked through the door to their minuscule studio apartment. The late-night zoomies Whiskey experienced between midnight and 4 am every morning made her want to rip her hair out at times, but she would welcome even that annoying aspect of kitten behavior now. Despite her playfulness, Whiskey had been, somehow, remarkably fat for such an active being; it wasn’t until James moved in that she started losing weight. Her appetite waned, and soon after, she stopped sleeping cuddled up at her feet the way she had every night since she brought her home from the shelter. 

    The first and last time she took Whiskey to the vet with James, three or four years ago, the veterinarian chided her for neglecting the cat’s care. 

    “You need to understand that her lifespan will be much shorter if she continues with this level of stress,” he said. “Can you think of any factors, anything at all, that could be causing this kind of behavior?” 

    She feigned shock, as she was so accustomed to by then, while James bristled at the idea that there was anything unsatisfactory in their perfect home. In hindsight, she realized how unlikely it was that Dr. Burrows wouldn’t have noticed the long sleeves she wore in ninety-degree weather, and the orange-tinted stage makeup on her neck. She’d been having a lot of similar realizations lately, most of them accompanied by a layer of guilt and self-loathing. For the first month after James’s arrest, she could barely bring herself to think about the way he had treated Whiskey. It was easier to push those feelings aside, to focus on her own loss of agency than consider the innocence of a maltreated animal. The road swerves ahead of them, and she veers wildly back and forth with each curve between cursing James and condemning herself. To what extent was she to blame? By the time he first laid hands on Whiskey, she was too afraid of him to intervene. And then came the excuses: “He just gets so angry, he can’t help himself; he doesn’t mean to hurt her; he’ll see a therapist; he’ll get better.” 

    She glances over at Whiskey in the passenger seat. Her mother always told her that cats had a better sense of human character than humans themselves; she wished it hadn’t taken her so long to believe her. James met Whiskey on their second date, the first night of many he spent at her apartment. Contrary to her then-outgoing disposition, Whiskey squeezed herself under a bookshelf and hid the entire time he was in the apartment. She dismissed the cat’s behavior as a meaningless quirk, and James’s night over turned into a second, which led to a third, which ultimately inspired a drunken decision to move in together. He was a stereotypical whirlwind romance in every way: in hindsight, too good to be true.

    They arrive at the new address sooner than she expected, and she hopes the two-hour drive is far enough for a fresh start. An emergency protective order, 6 months in prison, a stamp of approval on her address confidentiality application, and a taser as a last resort—she gave herself as much of a barrier between her new life and her old one as she could get. The movers had already started unloading the truck by the time she retrieves her key from the leasing office, and she leads them up to the second floor with Whiskey. Now wide-eyed and silent after two hours spent screaming, Whiskey barely moves a muscle as she opens the carrier and closes her in the dimly-lit bathroom, the furthest space from the chaos of the movers. 

    By the time the last box is unloaded, Whiskey has made herself a home in the darkest corner of a bathroom cabinet. She creaks the door open as quietly as possible; hours pass, or maybe just a few minutes, but Whiskey finally makes her way out of the bathroom. She has a brightness in her eyes that she hasn’t seen in a long time, and she doesn’t flinch to discover that she isn’t alone. Their new home is more reminiscent of their early days together in the studio than the suburban 3-bedroom they came from, sparking a brief memory of when she was still fighting the alarm clock to wake up at 11 pm for her overnight nursing shifts, before James convinced her she’d be better off as a stay-at-home wife. She holds herself as still as possible as Whiskey tiptoes her way across the bedroom. 

    Whiskey freezes when she sees her sitting on the floor, but she doesn’t run or back away. She holds out her hand so Whiskey can sniff it, tensed and ready to bolt at the slightest movement. The cat’s hesitant willingness to acknowledge her presence is nothing more and nothing less than the validation of seven excruciating years erased. Satisfied with whatever it is she smells, finding something changed or restored or irrevocably healing, Whiskey climbs, one cautious paw at a time, onto her lap.